What follows is part personal introduction, part biography, and mostly an effort to give you some idea why I might be particularly suited to write a textbook about Media and Society as opposed to Aspects of Chemistry or Symphonic Wind Ensemble.
I was born on a U.S. Air Force base in Germany, so I am an American citizen but there is a question as to whether or not I can legally run for president. As an Air Force brat I have also lived in Vermont, Florida (where our school would go outside to watch the Mercury rockets take off from Cape Canaveral), New Jersey, and Japan (where our middle school was used to train kamikaze pilots in World War II). My father retired to New Mexico where I graduated from high school the same year as Homer and Marge Simpson, both of whom have successfully avoided aging in the decades since.
I have a bachelor's degree with a double major in History and Political Science, as well as a master's degree in Speech Communication from the University of New Mexico. I received my doctorate in Communication Studies from the University of Iowa, where I did my dissertation on rhetorical dimensions of the Scopes "Monkey" Trial.
Living in Japan meant living without television for several years, which turned out to be like what it was for my parents during the Depression and World War II. In terms of newspapers and radios that mean only having Stars & Stripes and Armed Forces Radio, but for those years they were clearly more important mass media than television. We did get a small black & white television to watch the Moon landing, but since it only received Japanese television programs we could not understand the only time we actually watched anything were Japanese baseball games. There was only one movie theater on base, but in a week it would screen five different movies, so we went to the movies several times a week, just like people did a generation earlier.
Spending time essentially living in a earlier time, has made it easier for me to appreciate the uniqueness of other eras when reading about them. The ability appreciate the uniqueness of other people or even other times is a useful skill that I think everyone should have. Part of the emphasis on establish a timeline for each of the mass media we study is to better appreciate what particular technological advances or mass media artifacts meant to the people and the society at that time.
Currently, I teach in the Communication Department at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. Each semester I teach both Media & Society and Communication & Popular Culture. My other courses currently rotate amongst Rhetorical Criticism, Analysis of Public Discourse, Argumentation and Debate, and Persuasion and Argumentation in Public Speaking. This will help explain my emphasis in this textbook on how mass media function rhetorically. In the past I have taught courses specifically devoted to movies, television (including one devoted entirely to Breaking Bad), popular music, and comic books.
I am also a season ticket holder for the Minnesota Vikings and write theatrical reviews and other pieces for the Duluth News-Tribune. In the past I have covered high school basketball for The Albuquerque Journal, written and acted in plays, been one of the top five online Trivial Pursuit players in the entire world, hosted a four-hour radio show devoted to folk music, written and filmed television commercials for a local advertising firm, and done improv comedy. I collect baseball cards, comic books, and autographed photographs of the casts of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. I have over 7,000 television episodes on DVD (clearly I did not anticipate the Age of Streaming), and feel safe in saying I have easily seen at least twice as many movies as you. And your parents. Combined.
Consequently, this textbook could be fairly interesting.
Media and Society is dedicated to the memory of my father, Louis Anthony Bernabo (September 13, 1927-August 4, 2015) --Duluth, Minnesota - August 2016